


Safehouse

by Domestic_Occultism



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Companion OC - Freeform, F/M, Idiots in Love, Nate does not exist, Shaun is not her baby, Slow Burn, Slow Romance, canon defiant SoSu, extreme lack of emotional awareness, hey idiots youre in love omfg, idiots to lovers, longfic, neither of them realize the thing they feel is love until someone else points it out, probably future smut who knows
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:41:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27225205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Domestic_Occultism/pseuds/Domestic_Occultism
Summary: When Olivia Zaylee Cohen was dragged past Vault Teach security and into a private room inside Vault 111, she never expected to be put on ice for more than two hundred years. But, to be fair, she also never expected her fiance to be brutally murdered in front of her, and she also never really expected the world to end. Sometimes shit happens.When she gets nice and defrosted, she renames herself, and only survives through the first few weeks thanks to a Handyman robot she stumbled into while trying to find her footing in a new world. Eventually, she learns how to kick it around the new wasteland, and forces herself to find her way through the Commonwealth.It's around this time that the newly reinvented Zero broadens her horizons, and she meets a few new people- one of them being one Robert Joseph MacCready.
Relationships: Deacon/Ella, MacCready/Zero, Robert Joseph MacCready/Female Sole Survivor, Robert Joseph MacCready/Sole Survivor
Kudos: 2





	Safehouse

**Author's Note:**

> When I warn you that this is going to be a slow burn, idiots in love story, I mean it.

## Prologue: Zero

When Olivia Zaylee Cohen was dragged past Vault Teach security and into a private room inside Vault 111, she never expected to be put on ice for _more than two hundred years_. 

To be fair, she hadn’t expected to be thrown into a cryogenic chamber against her will at all. The plan, if the bombs ever fell, were for her and her new fiance to evacuate together. Micah was the one with the connections, the one who had gotten them the private room in the Vault, and the one who had a bunch of their stuff packed away into the neat little room for when the time came. Micah was the one who had saved her life and given her a new one. He had also been the one murdered in front of her, before she was dragged down here alone like some sort of sick joke.

When the door to the metal pod opened, Olivia found that her limbs didn’t work, and she crashed unceremoniously to the floor, coughing and choking on nothing but air as her lungs got used to working again after being frozen. Quickly evaporating mist followed her out, rising to the ceiling and disappearing. Disoriented and suffering from blurry, unaligned vision, the girl lay on the floor, shivering and shaking, for what felt like a second eternity. She had expected to be thawed out, and fall into the waiting arms of the man who put her in there in the first place– _Wilder Cain_ – but the room was empty and quiet, aside from her ragged breaths. 

As she stared forward at the grey wall, the vivid scene of Micah’s death played on a loop in her head like it was happening right in front of her all over again. She didn’t want to look down at herself, certain that even after being frozen, the blood from his slit throat was still staining her satin dress and speckled in her blonde hair.

Her brain barely registered the pain of the fall until she was finally ready to pull herself to her feet. She was wobbly in her heels, like a newborn deer with ungraceful legs, but she made it into a standing position fine enough. She looked around the room, eyes landing on the fancy white cabinets on the other side of the room which held her and Micah’s clothing, and then the bed. She was alone, and if she were being honest, that was more than fine with her.

But it confused her. If no one had been there to open the cryopod, then how had the door opened? As she turned, fingers still burning at her sides as they unthawed, her eyes landed on the door to the hallway and the rest of the Vault. 

Upon exiting the room, she would discover that the only reason the pod had thawed and unlocked at all was because a _giant fucking roach_ had chewed through the wiring in the wall, and sent the whole system into some sort of emergency mode. Olivia had nothing to kill it with, aside from her shoes, and so she slipped one off and held it by the end, bringing the heel of her silvery-black stiletto down into the bugs head until it stopped moving. 

The sheer size of the roach nearly made her want to go back inside the room and stay until she died, but she had to know how long she had been under. Olivia trudged slowly through the maze of hallways that made up Vault 111, only having reason to pause when she entered the Overseer’s room, and saw a skeleton foot peeking out from behind the rounded desk. 

Dead bodies didn’t bother her. She had seen more than her share in her lifetime. The part that bothered her was the fact that there was a dead body-- a complete skeleton, no less-- in the middle of the vault. Not only had no one found the dead body in order to lay it to rest, or heaven forbid, save the person who was dying, but it had laid there for a long enough time that the flesh and muscle had rotted away.

Olivia stepped over the skeleton, tapping keys on the desk terminal until it started up. Overseer doors were always locked. Luckily it was all automated. She triggered the command, and across the room, the door opened. She took one more look down at the dead body. The grey floor beneath it was stained. Now that her faculties were finally coming back, her focus was sharp enough to register the pistol lying next to the skeleton’s hip. Olivia thought about the giant bug in the hallway before she reached down to grab it, and checked to see if it was empty. It wasn’t. She held it in her hand as she walked through the open door and down the hall.

The vault door, and all the mechanisms that went with it, were waiting for her at the end of the hall. The room was not empty when she got there. 

The skeletons of three more dead Vault technicians awaited her in the room, as did another giant cockroach. This one was shot before it could attempt to skitter towards her, and as it’s body crumpled to the floor, Olivia walked towards the console that controlled the door, standing over one of the skeletons.

For just a second, she stared down at the skeleton at her feet. There was nothing there to connect the bones anymore, but they were still laid out in the exact shape of the person they once belonged to. Removing the Pipboy and messing up the entire thing felt wrong, but she did it anyway, knocking the arm bones loose and watching a few finger bones roll away as she lifted the piece of technology off the floor. It was the only way to open the vault door, she told herself, as she clasped it around her arm and felt the momentary sting of a needle in her arm. Once the life feed was connected, the tech sprung to life, and her vitals flashed across the screen. 

When the door rumbled open, causing the ground beneath her feet to vibrate, she felt nothing. It all sounded worlds away, like she was holding her head underwater. When the metal grate floor slid out into the now open vault door, she still felt nothing. When she stood in front of the giant elevator, watching the platform descend towards her and listening to the gate rattle as it opened, she felt nothing. She stood in front of the open gate, looking into the dark elevator, staring and unmoving for a long time. Minutes passed by slowly, dragging on, before she finally stepped in.

The ride up to the surface felt infinite. She stumbled into the bright sunlight. All around her was silence, even in the neighborhood at the base of the hill. Her legs felt stiff and awkward as she made her way down the dirt path, cheeks wet before she even realized she was tearing up. 

When she entered Sanctuary, the little neighborhood she had once hoped to call home, she wrapped her arms around herself and dug her fingers into her own skin. Parts of her still felt frozen. She surveyed the destruction with a heavy feeling in her stomach, like swallowed stones pulling her down to her knees, but she kept going anyway. Eventually, her feet carried her to the front of the house where it had all started. As she stared up at it, the ruined roof and torn down walls, she nearly missed the robot floating up to greet her. She must have looked a mess from his perspective. Some girl with roach guts on one shoe, covered in blood that isn’t hers, stumbling into an empty neighborhood in a blue satin dinner dress. 

She had no idea how many times the thing tried to get her attention before her lips parted and words came out. 

“ _What year is it?”_

2287, the robot replied in a voice that was much too cheery to be giving her that sort of news. Fucking 2287. Inside her head, it felt like a fake number. She had been forgotten about for longer than two hundred years. Left in a chamber to rot.

Again, the robot spoke to her, asking for her name, and noting that she seemed particularly distressed. 

After a long pause, the girl swallowed her name, letting it be buried at the bottom of her ribcage with everything else from before. She looked away from the red front door, wondering how quickly the flowery wreath had disintegrated, and eyed the Mr. Handyman. 

She introduced herself as Zero. Then she asked about the world.


End file.
